Friday, August 1, 2008

One of the few drawbacks of being a professional blogger is the lack of time available for surfing other foodie sites online. That gnawing sense you're missing out on exactly what inspired you to blog in the first place. Gone are the days of cruising carefree across the vast plane of culinary content. If only there existed an online resource that pulled together, and organized, all this edible information into a delicious digest. And then, I found Foodbuzz.

Remember the feeling you had the first time you saw a food court at the mall? Corndogs next to pizza, next to burgers, next to ice cream - ah, the simple brilliance of its design. You no longer had to walk from one end of the mall to the other before deciding which form of high-fructose corn syrup you were going to feast upon. That's the same feeling I had when I came across Foodbuzz.

Foodbuzz allows you to search for, and browse, a huge collection of culinary content including; recipes, videos, news, photos, restaurant reviews, blog posts, new restaurants, and forums. You've probably noticed the Foodbuzz badge on this blog's sidebar, which pronounces me as a "featured publisher." Through this program, they're helping promote top-tier food blogs, as well as sharing in the revenue generated.

Since they're based in San Francisco, I was fortunate enough to attend a dinner last night they hosted for a group of Bay Area featured publishers. The meal was at Perbacco, an Italian restaurant downtown, where we enjoyed good food (see here), great wine, and even better conversation. It was a chance for the Foodbuzz staff to meet bloggers they'd only previously seen on-screen, and for the bloggers to meet each other. It was a rare, and very much welcomed, change from the normally impersonal online interactions.

The Foodbuzz staff could not have been nicer, and displayed a genuine love of food (I was dubious at first glance, since they were all so thin and healthy looking), and passion for what they're trying to do. You can't fake the funk when it comes to foodie websites, which is why I'm so encouraged by this company's future, and this blogs participation in it. Thanks to Doug (aka DFresh), Ryan (aka ryanthegirl), and the rest of the fabulous Foodbuzz team!

Oh, the photos made me salivate...even worse, I'm jealous because you actually got to eat all the foods in the pics! My first thought was that it was just photos of stuff that was from the Foodbuzz site. Thanks for the heads-up to the link.